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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673169">NIM And The Soul</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrellVerse/pseuds/DrellVerse'>DrellVerse</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Drell, Mass Effect, Among Other Sorties [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Mass Effect</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Artificial Intelligence Tiers, Gen, Interim of Reaper War, Metaphysical Phenomena, New Vancouver/War Scorned Earth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:54:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>19,008</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673169</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrellVerse/pseuds/DrellVerse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after Dimitra Grim Shepard went to the stars, strange happenings have transpired in space. A mechanist—NIM—from a far off galaxy has returned to the nebula, seeking its Reapers. . . Gifted with the ability to bring life into the broken, NIM set about returning the Harvest to full operation. Until it meets Gail. . . Gail Hamilton, an AI specialist with more power than a broker, an admiral, and the Illusive Man combined, reaches into her knowledge base to pull out the one adversary a mechanist is not prepared for. . . A soul of a woman who gave her life for the progress of Humanity, a woman who lived in a dreamworld created by Cerberus for those sent into cryo for the enduring eternity, only to find in her sleep of reality a Drell by the name of Quoyle S’runae. In one world, able to cross borders. . . In the real world, beyond an imagination she already knew, Blasa Neliah did only what Humanity taught her. . . And lost everything. . .<br/>Now, with the threat of the Harvest imminent, the men and woman brought together to find Blasa’s missing daemataru, a living host AI, go to Earth to hunt the ruins for the woman Quoyle married in his dreams, the woman Willem Vanderbilt hopes to kill, and the AI Gail wants returned.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Drell, Mass Effect, Among Other Sorties [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2009026</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>[A/N] Tchaikovsky will lend much inspiration to the background of this piece.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>One long, segmented, spidery arm felt over the rubble, moving carefully as if in search. It lifted and paused, before dipping back down to grind through debris, and when it raised again, a small body was drawn up. The leg drew the body closer, another hooked robotic limb moving to the side of the ashen head, the woman as if asleep, her mouth frozen in an open sigh as the limbs cracked, dry and ashen.</p><p>The head on the massive body spun, red eye opening and contracting.</p><p>It turned, holding the remains of the body in its forelimbs and crawling through the rubble, the expanse of stars seemingly its destination.</p><p>It traveled in an open corridor of the Citadel, ruptured as though something had torn through and opened the ceiling to the cold space outside. More spidery bodies emerged from the debris, pulling apart shattered Citadel and removing space dried bodies. Large swathes of wall and bulkhead rolled at the hands of the spiders moving each scrap to a new destination, where, only It knew.</p><p>Clawed, metal geared fingers grasped the rail of a dark balcony, a figure unreal and inorganic looking out over the repairing mechanics at work. It fancied a metal cloth that hung from Its jagged shoulders, made of parts silver and black, cords that were not flesh, and no tissue in between. An oculus spiraled open and small, looking from straight on to the left.</p><p>It turned, letting go of the rail, and the heavy metal cloth with its thousands of tiny links swept with It in a rush like sand, but the squawk of something down below, followed by strange tunes of elements It had only heard before made the figure stop and turn a superior appendage with the oculus towards the origin of. . . Musical notes.</p><p>One of the spidery mechanics had raised a metal box with a spinning circuit inside its glass top. It held up the noisy box between its steel claws, shaking this and turning a fat little head with the red eye up to the wide balcony, the rail behind which the two-legged figure with a shadow of cloth was turned.</p><p>One arm rested its grip on the rail, the figure half opening its posture to the musical device’s origin.</p><p>The mechanic traveled claw over claw, leg after leg after leg rising and falling over the sloping, dipping debris on its way to the figure. When it reached the bottom of the ceiling where this joined the wall serving as a floor, the mechanic scaled the damaged ceiling to reach the overhang with decorative bars and, controlling a hold on the topmost one, reached a segmented limb, twenty feet long, to the figure that was turning until the unique shoulders were square with the mechanic.</p><p>The round head pivoted and followed between the built hands of the apparent superior and the box now playing strings, soft plucks of chord, a chime of small keys clinking in repetition from a tiny motor. The hands encompassed the box as the dangerous limb returned to the round bulk of the spider, the machine curiously observing its master hold the box in one hand and tilt its conformation of rods, panels, glass, and gears at the musical instrument.</p><p>Drawing the box close to the trunk, It carried it along as It turned, the mechanic rising higher to see where both were going, then hesitantly glanced back at the debris below, and climbed down to dutifully resume its work.</p><p>This man-conformation of machinery strode down tall, open cosmos halls, more repairs performed by the mechanics both appearing and disappearing from corners and large doorways.</p><p>The oculus had a hood over its encasement as It moved through the darkness, Serpent Nebula shining purple through the broken walls and windows. The circular heads of the mechanics with their single red orbs turned each at its passing, as if drawn to the music playing.</p><p>Ascending an array of stairs to climb to the high most chamber of the Citadel Tower, and ascending the tunnel by hand or claw into what remained of a sphere hollow and arranged around said tower, it found its way into the top room, where It walked to a raised dais and proceeded to sit down, the metal cape surrounding, sliding like coins across the black floor.</p><p>The box contained a smaller box made of rosen and carved wood, organic vines and flowers and some aerially gifted species of wings adorning the sides and edges. The gears of a metal hand uncoupled the glass top of the box from the bottom black metal, then slipped inside along the walls of the wood nestled within. The metal hand on the bottom pulled the encasing off while the other secured tightly and lifted, removing the wood box still playing its music that was beginning to slow.</p><p>It raised the box, oculus spiraling narrow, then widening apart as It tilted this up to study the bottom, turning it by rotating a disc three hundred sixty degrees in an apparently wristed joint. There was a notch on the side, marked by a small rose, and another finger with a needle touched at this and tapped. The box lid opened, the music louder and winding slower. The appendage of a mechanical head that resembled more of a skull than a machine turned and twisted to peer inside, then withdrew an inch as It sat there holding the box up in hand for a time, seemingly listening, enjoying, or just existing to experience the behavior of that wooden box with metal cylinders and thin wires playing what little music it could.</p><p>The music wound slower, and finally, in a simple <em>plick</em>, fell silent.</p><p>NIM placed down the other box, letting it nest crooked in a lap of rods and metal. With the freed hand, it raised to the wooden shell and tapped, sounding a dull, light knocking. When this produced no result, and the musical melody did not resume, It lowered the box with the other hand, and reached a digit inside the top opening.</p><p>A light sparked within, and instantaneously the music box wound and played, singing out strong and steady in its chords of melody.</p><p>NIM lowered the box to the metal dais.</p><p>It listened as the tune played out into the pumping warm air of the Citadel, nebula of dust its backdrop among the scatter of floating shipwrecks and Reaper hulks.</p><p>Lights began to permeate all over the station, arms flickering, protesting with motion.</p><p>The music from the box played over speakers throughout the Citadel, and did not stop again.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>[A/N] Grief, addiction, contemplation of suicide.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The cartridge stood out with its lettering, white and small font black, nestled into the mouth piece compressor, held between his navy and red fingers. Behind in blurred vision was a wood table, yellow and brown, the grey carpet. The cartridge moved close to his vision, his gaze tilting up with it.</p><p>A crisp click and released hiss of air emitted from the appliance, his lips closed over the mouthpiece as he inhaled the released chemical and held it there for three seconds.</p><p>His hand fell to the side, the inhalant dropping, bouncing onto the floor. His black eyes reflected slats of light from that revealed by a window and he blinked.</p><p>
  <em>Quoyle. . . Quoyle. . .</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A woman’s face, Human, high bones, blue eyes that crinkled as she smiled right at him. . . Fine black eyebrows, pink rose lips, black hair hiding her ears. . . Blue shirt, the skin of her neck and below her clavicles exposed. . .</em>
</p><p><em>Rumbling</em>.</p><p>The door to the apartment thumped, shaking with repeated pounding. It would stop and start again after a listening pause.</p><p> </p><p>“Quoyle!”</p><p>Willem pressed the left side of his face and ear to the door, listening. He could smell Halant through the bottom and had first smelled it in the vent to his room beside the Drell’s. He moved away from the door and faced it, left forearm coming up to slap his palm against the panel again.</p><p>“Quoyle! Open the damn room up! I can smell that shit in my dorm! Open up!”</p><p>Willem’s rugged face looked right down the hall as he stopped hitting the door and waited. Light fell on him as a navy and magenta arm reached out, hand grabbing his shirt, and wrenched him in.</p><p>The door closed.</p><p>Willem’s back was on the floor, his eyes staring up into the silver barrel of a gun and an angry Drell with black eyes angled down the sights, his nostrils flaring as he held the Dutch down by his navy shirt. Quoyle’s hand regripped the gun as he drew back the hammer, clicking the firearm into active mode.</p><p>Willem started to chuckle, his shoulders shaking as he held out his hands above his chest, palms up.</p><p>“Whoa ho, there.” His smile froze, eyes fixed as he spoke up at the Drell, “You’re fucking high.”</p><p>The Drell continued to glare down at him, shoulders and chest slowly expanding and contracting with steady breathing. Willem noticed the same gold ring with its diamonds on the Drell’s second to smallest finger. He pointed the index of his right hand at it.</p><p>“She make you do it?”</p><p>Quoyle’s eyes blinked once, twice, pausing before a third time. His face seemed to clear and show recognition of who was under the aim of his pistol. His hand freed the marine’s clothes and Quoyle bent away, straightening as he decocked the gun and stepped left over his body to go back to the other side of the room.</p><p>Willem rolled onto his right arm and proceeded to get up, but stopped when he saw what lay littered all over the floor. There were at least five other cartridges of Halant littered about, dropped one after the other, used.</p><p>Quoyle sat down on the bed and tossed the heavy gun onto the table in front of him, making a loud bark of disturbance on impact, reaching into a knap bag for another cartridge.</p><p>“Jesus,” Willem murmured, “you’re a fiend.” He pushed up on his left hand and stood to his feet. He was dressed in navy shirt, taut over his chest, and green pants of his lower gear. Black boots, green belt, blond hair loose above his ears. Hands open and out to his sides, he looked about, assessed the room, then strode over cautiously towards the Drell sitting hunched and raising the next cartridge to his lips.</p><p>“You keep that up, they’ll drag you out for detox, cut you out of the plans. You’ll never get a chance to see her.”</p><p>The navy finger paused over the compressor button. His green and magenta lips moved as the cartridge parted away with the shift of hand. His head turned a degree towards Willem’s direction.</p><p>“They’re only going to give her to that thing.”</p><p>The cartridge drew forward to his mouth as his lips sealed over it.</p><p>“You think she’d want you like this?” Willem stared at the cartridge in the hand. It drew away again.</p><p>“Get out.”</p><p>Willem firmed his lips, chin wrinkling with displeasure. “I worked with Drell before. Never seen one get high on Halant.”</p><p>“I said. . . Get. . . Out. . .”</p><p>Willem gestured angrily at the cartridges on the floor.</p><p>“You’re fucking up our mission with this shit. Why’d you come if all you’re going to do is get high and compromise us?”</p><p>The crests and horns tilted up as the face bent down and the hand with the cartridge lowered to his green baggy pants.</p><p>“You came because you wanted to see her. Whatever she is. . . Look, I know heartache. I seen enough die and people get lost. You have the chance to see someone again, someone you obviously care for, otherwise why would you be here, using this shit.”</p><p>A sniff came from the Drell.</p><p>“One last chance and I will shoot you. Get out of my dorm before I send you to the infirmary.”</p><p>“Fuck you, you goddamn lizard. I got shit riding on this mission, too. You not the only one with grief. Least you get a chance to find someone again you loved. . . Fucking pussy.” He shook his head, turned, and walked out after reopening the door. It sealed again.</p><p>Quoyle held the Halant to his lips, closing his eyes as more tears slid out, gleaming against navy skin. He depressed the button, inhaled harshly, coughed, and as he did, whipped the expended cartridge against a curtain before standing up. He lifted the table over, spilling his gun and bag onto the floor, then stopped, pausing to look behind it. He bent down, picked up the gun, staring at it in his hand.</p><p>Holding the nozzle to his temple, he closed his eyes, his breathing fast and harried.</p><p><em>Quoyle</em>. . .</p><p>
  <em>The woman’s face flashed through his mind as she was sitting above him, head haloed by a window and shaking back and forth in disbelieving laughter before she closed to come kiss him.</em>
</p><p>His black eyes snapped open, breathing rate fast, nearly hyperventilating. He started shaking.</p><p>Quoyle opened his mouth to let out a growling scream.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Quoyle looked out through dark, glassy eyes, his face vacant. Willem glanced left at him, a few windows behind the back of his profile, he smiling slightly before gazing ahead again. Gail was in the front of the well lit room, most of the source from the windows, her face slanted as she looked out at everyone from bright eyes over her thin spectacles, the beads looped over her shoulders.</p><p>“I feel like I’m at university,” Willem mentioned over his shoulder to the drell sitting partially behind him.</p><p>Quoyle didn’t blink more than once. His head was tilted opposite Gail’s at the front of the short hall. Other uniforms were sitting at desks sprawling out in front of them. Gail had a lime yellow cardigan buttoned at her neck, but open down the rest over a light shirt. She had a rod that she was tapping and waving in front of some configuration on a dry erase board, which was why Willem was having flashbacks to school. He chuckled, raising his head some.</p><p>“Is there something funny, Mr. Vanderholt?”</p><p>“Vander<em>bilt</em>,” he corrected with a pert lift, waving his hand, “but they call me The Dutch.”</p><p>“Who’s <em>they</em>?” Gail did not change her angle of expression, grilling him over her glasses.</p><p>“People.” Willem waved his pen, tapping it nervously between his thumb and index crook. The drell behind him raised a meaty, darkly hued hand to his face and rubbed down. He narrowed his green scales at the human to the right of him, then sighed and faced forward again.</p><p>“Now if you’ll all pay attention,” Gail’s soft jowls moved, “we have a Reaper in Citadel space that has activated and moved the Citadel. It does not seem interested,” her eyes blinked once, “and I stress <em>interested</em>, in engaging with anything else. At the moment.” She held the rod aslant of her chest, hands separated along the black and white plastic dowel. “There is a Reaper construct, we believe, at work on the Citadel, returning it to full power. We cannot afford to let this happen.”</p><p>The room stirred at her words. One hand raised. A young ensign in back with brown hair and the eyes that had still not seen battle.</p><p>“How do we know it’s hostile?”</p><p>“Good question. We don’t, but we can presume that any Reaper waking from its silence will have costly effects on the galaxy in its current state. We have attempted. . . Surveillance.”</p><p>She reached into the pants of light colored fabric and removed a clicker, which she depressed once.</p><p><em>Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 2</em> suddenly played out of overhead speakers angling at the middle of the room from the corners of the walls.</p><p>Willem started chuckling, his shoulders shaking as he listened. Quoyle’s eyes widened.</p><p>
  <em>Blasa’s favorite music.</em>
</p><p>The rest of the room stirred again with looks at each other and smiles. Gail looked imperiously over them, no humor on her professorial face as she glanced left and right with her eyes and spoke over violins and horns.</p><p>“It would seem our visitor on the Citadel is appreciative of music.”</p><p>“This is what you’re picking up through surveillance?” Willem asked without raising his hand or asking to be heard.</p><p>Gail twitched her face, rotating it counterclockwise at him like an interested owl. “Yes.” Her gaze turned over the rest of them, marines, mostly human, some turian and asari, and, of course, Quoyle. “We would like to establish contact, we being Thessia’s remaining Republic, Systems Alliance, Cerberus Group, and the Hanar Primacy.” She turned her face again, another twitch to focus on the few turians present on the right side of her hall. “Turian Hierarchy is here to lend support.”</p><p>A turian with a white face and brown jaw nodded from his stance by the door. Gail’s eyes and then her face twitched to Quoyle. “We would like to acquire Blasa. That’s where you come in.”</p><p>All heads turned to the startled drell. Quoyle’s hands slipped to the edges of his desk and gripped it. Willem was the only one not looking at him, though he had a smirk on his face as he stared at his thumbnails.</p><p>Gail directed her words straight at Quoyle.</p><p>“You have not seen your wife in ten years.”</p><p>“Eleven.” Quoyle replied quick back.</p><p>Gail’s head changed angles, she taking a step forward with one hand over the other grasping the end of her stick.</p><p>“How would you like to find her, Mr. S’runae?”</p><p>Quoyle was speechless.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hooded colored eye ridges lifted over their black eyed gaze connected to something over the view of a multi-toned armed, Quoyle flinching his brow scales just a little. People milled about in the background, a cafeteria of sorts, as he stared vacantly ahead, his right forearm blocking view of his mouth and lower expression of his face half on the table, a long dark one with cafeteria seating of circular attached stools low to the ground. The area was noisy, the smell of food rich and intermingled with the pump of artificial air and purifiers filling his nostrils. He tapped his two fingers of his right hand on the surface of the table, thinking, spacing out, searching for something in his head. A tray lay nearby, its contents eaten, and a paper cup that once held water. The room was brightly lit, window stalls in the background, not crowded, not packed, but offering service frequently enough for it not to be lacking of life.</p><p>Willem Vanderbilt showed up, walking towards Quoyle’s left, but on the other side of the table. He held a tray, left handed, supporting a white styrofoam bowl with a top and two cups, perhaps of coffee and something else like water. His figure cut lean between the two, and Willem sat down, facing Quoyle, left of him a few inches. The Drell’s head lifted off his forearm, staring at the blond man seated across from him, tucking his head down to attend to his tray.</p><p>“Why are you sitting here?” Quoyle asked him.</p><p>Willem mumbled something beside the food entering his mouth, already into his meal, midway between lunch and supper of the day.</p><p>“Just thinking,” he said in reply, not making eye contact with the Drell, focused as he was on his food, “if we’re going to do this, and do it right, might as well get to know you, get started on some rapport,” he said and bent back to business. He grabbed a cup, pulled off the lid, and drank from it.</p><p>Quoyle’s eye ridges lowered in a scornful way, his right arm bending at the elbow high as he planted his right hand on the table, the left taking on his lean.</p><p>“Yeah? Well, I don’t need to know you to go on this mission.”</p><p>Willem picked up a napkin, concealed by the edge of his tray, and using two hands, tented it to wipe his mouth. He put this down and picked up his spoon, digging into the bowl.</p><p>“Gail says,” was all he replied with.</p><p>Quoyle’s gaze glowered, tossing right as he stared away from the human. Willem paused, looked up at him and flicked out his spoon with his left hand.</p><p>“Look, we need to work together. I’m going be on you about that thing you did in the dorm, you know, that thing with the—“ he made a <em>ksh</em> huffing sound before spinning his spoon and turning back down to his meal.</p><p>Quoyle’s shoulders seemed to bump as he grunted silently and after a second more, considered leaving the table. He looked ready to go, but glanced down at the brown surface, then over at Willem’s tray.</p><p>“What are you eating?”</p><p>Willem grunted from another bite. “Something like food.”</p><p>Quoyle’s eyes narrowed more, his gaze focused on the man.</p><p>“That looks disgusting.”</p><p>Willem nodded his head, blond hair up and down. “I know.”</p><p>“So why eat it?”</p><p>“Why smoke Halant?”</p><p>Quoyle’s middle brow scales flexed and twitched as he looked down and forward, his left hand out in front of him, empty. His right arm was back at his side, he sitting up straight.</p><p>“I don’t know,” he rolled out in answer, gaze on his finger, “It’s just there. . . I got nothing else to do.”</p><p>“Well, now you do,” Willem said. At first he didn’t look, but then glanced over pointedly at Quoyle, who slowly turned his head in Willem’s direction. “You going to get rid of the shit and Drell up. . . AI or woman, she’ll be waiting for you. . . Makes no sense after all this time to go find her, let her see you all fucked up.”</p><p>They both held each other’s gazes, then Willem looked down into his food and continued eating. Quoyle looked away, but this time, a thoughtful gaze to his expression.</p><p>Lurching up suddenly, he elevated his tray in front of his waist and exited right. Willem’s head was up, watching him go.</p><p> </p><p>“You really think we can find her?” Quoyle bent low to Gail, hounding her left flank as he kept pace with the astoundingly fast paced little woman making her way down the bright corridor, windowed on their right behind them, as she turned right herself down an intersecting corridor with the Drell barely giving her an inch of separation. Willem ran out of a doorway further down, stopped, looked left, and ran after them, his blond hair flying with each bounding step as he sought to find them, banging a right at the intersection they had turned down.</p><p>Gail was distracted, looking elsewhere besides Quoyle, her jaw slightly loose and jowls slightly bouncing with the beads of her glasses under her grey, crisp bangs as she looked left then right.</p><p>“Of course, I think we can find her. . . She’s on Earth.”</p><p>“Earth?” Quoyle’s eye ridges were upheld, his black eyes rounding. He held out his hand. “What’s she doing on Earth? How do you know this?”</p><p>“Oh, Quoyle,” Gail was turning right again, still not bothering to look at him. He still had not left her shoulder, practically teeter tottering over her. “I don’t have time for guessing. She’s there and that’s all that matters. Now, ah! There she is!”</p><p>Willem slowed up, straightening tall as an arrow as his eyes popped and his mouth hung open, a sleek, voluptuous, mechanical female androny coming through their way of passage. He broke into a smile and nearly introduced himself.</p><p>“Edy,” Gail greeted the robot with a short smile. She was under five feet in height. “Have you a moment, dear?”</p><p>The feminine face tilted down at the woman. “Gail Thompson, specialty, AI researcher. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance again.”</p><p>Gail’s smile diminished into a tight frown, her teeth showing a little as she pinched something below in her hands. “They have not improved your heuristics since you went back online.”</p><p>People filled the hall, moving passed briskly. Quoyle stood on Gail’s left, looking back and forth between the short woman and the taller, Human-based walking machine. Willem played with his hair, smoothing it back, and waiting to be introduced until Gail turned and furrowed her middle brow at him. “What? Do you expect me to introduce you? Not a chance.” She turned back to Edy. “I need you to come with me, dear. Can I steal you for a moment?”</p><p>“If that is meant to encourage my slipping away from the admiral’s attention, I will follow you now.”</p><p>“She’s an AI,” Quoyle suddenly said, pointing at her and glancing incredulously at Willem.</p><p>“Of course, she’s an AI,” Gail gruffed upwards at him. “Come on, Edy. To my office. . . What poor excuse they gave me.” Edy turned as Gail proceeded right down the corridor, more windows on their right, Quoyle and Willem elbowing each other to keep behind them.</p><p>“Edy,” Gail continued on, walking down another right turn into an office with windows behind a dark, grim desk and a dull, grim carpeted floor. Edy walked in and stopped in front of her to focus downward and listen as Willem and Quoyle entered through the doorway. “I need you to access the archive system for Cerberus Group. Can you do that for me?”</p><p>“What would you like me to bring up for you, Gail?”</p><p>“Blasa, Elain, Neliah. Cerberus archive: 1432089Z.”</p><p>“You can’t just hack the Cerberus network!” Quoyle gasped, looking left and right, behind him. “<em>In Cerberus headquarters</em>!”</p><p>Gail gave him a pompous grin from the side. “Obviously I have access to it, despite Alliance-Cerberus shortcomings in personnel relations, but I need Edy to bypass all the passcode prompts. It just saves me time from the hassle of unlocking ten, twenty different sites. As for you, go back to training,” she said this to Willem, then to his Drell counterpart, her eyes flicking right above the spectacles, “Quoyle, go to detox. I can smell Halant on your breath. And if Hackett finds out you’re an abuser, he’ll ride my ass all the way to Earth. Now get out so I can get some work done in peace without you two pestering Edy and I.”</p><p>“That’d be a sight,” Willem confided under his breath to Quoyle as he dejectedly stuffed his hands into his pockets and accompanied the Drell out, door sealing behind them to close off the researcher and AI from unwanted intrusions.</p><p> </p><p>“Now, Edy, that I have your attention, can you tell me where last ‘Ben’ was reported to be seen on Earth?”</p><p>The androny cocked her head left and spoke without moving her lips, silver gleam of her face reflecting, polished, the light from Gail’s window. Her blue hair was a helmet scooped around the seamless edge of constructed face, the eyes unmoving. Body was a silver platinum skin, just as hard and polished as the bluer lapis zuli coloring befitting the chest from armpit to armpit and down over her torso, stopping at metallic thighs and extending further once again from the knee joints and patellar cap to the top of her feet, silver soles flat, intact. She was nothing like her predecessor, Gail heard, but these days the technology needed a home rather than a shiny new corvette that could walk and talk like any organically similar material. It had been Hackett’s order to make the vessel more. . . Appropriate, and from what Gail had also heard of the prior body, had been akin to a male architect’s fantasy for gynoids.</p><p>“Admiral Hackett has confirmed this in a recent email to you, Professor Thompson.”</p><p>“Please, Edy, call me by my maiden name. Hamilton was fine.”</p><p>“Does the doctor no longer exist, Professor Hamilton?” Edy’s immobile face waited, still with that cocked look, though the voice had changed some to be more empathetic and inquisitive.</p><p>Gail fluttered her eyelids behind her glasses. “Don’t worry, Edy. I’ll be alright. You don’t have to use your heuristics on me. I can speak of Peter’s death without artificially simulated sympathies. Please answer my question, based on Cerberus logs. Not what Hackett emailed me. I authorize you to breach procedural protocol and inform your superior.”</p><p>“Yes, mother. Collating details now.” Edy remained still, frozen in her position as the computer in her body compiled the data Gail had requested. Gail turned and went to her desk, sitting down and removing her glasses. She rubbed two fingers at her eye and glanced at a paper, then began to shuffle through these spread out on her desktop, which had a glass plate pinning down a plethora of documents and memos she kept handy for hiding or revealing as was necessary.</p><p>“Blasa Elain Neliah.” Edy straightened, hands held in front of her groin, fingers loose as though she were a kangaroo holding her palms over a pouch. Gail ignored the conformation, lacking in its original sophistication of the original mobile unit harnessed by the AI. Gail did not look up as she continued to organize her papers, and meticulously began sorting her pens and datapads on the gleaming desk, reflecting more bright, cool light from the window behind her. “Qualified for Cerberus Tactical in 2003. Placed into cryogenesis with self-modulated wakenings for testing and acclimatization. Cryo age, eighteen. Current time: two hundred eighty-three years.”</p><p>“She advanced quickly,” Gail said, still not looking up.</p><p>“Space time added the extra century, Gail.” Edy cocked her head slightly to the other side, eyes pinpricks on the woman, having adjusted to receive the advanced lighting from the window backdrop. “She was opened in 2183. A fetus was extracted, this having decayed.”</p><p>“Oh,” Gail said, suddenly lifting her eyes upward to the androny. “I wasn’t aware.” She looked down at the desk, left and right as if trying to find something, her hands poised gently in front of her and hesitant to pick up anything. Finally she placed one down on the pile of paper foremost in front of her. The other lowered down to set upon her lap. Today she wore a yellow jacket that covered a light white shirt. The collar came short of her jowls as she looked up at Edy waiting in front of her desk, middle of the office. “Did the child have a father?”</p><p>“Blasa Neliah was a surrogate mother, Professor Thompson,” Edy said, leaning forward slightly to hold her wrist behind her back, the palm held open. “The two were mated in cryo. It was Cerberus’s hope to breed a compatible fetus from the husband’s sperm.”</p><p>“So they were married. . . When?”</p><p>Edy straightened, tilting her head to the right, searching for the information. Her robotic gaze returned to the little woman seated beyond the desk. “2173.”</p><p>“But she was in stasis.”</p><p>“Cerberus implemented DreamCatcher, a program meant to align each sleeping individual in cryo to a linked colony over the cerebral cortical connection. The program was formed with software, and hardware by way of implants in tissue of the brains. Waking from sleep was as if waking from reality. Most subjects were willing to return to stasis almost immediately. It is how Quoyle S’runae and Blasa Neliah met.”</p><p>“DreamCatcher,” Gail repeated, lowering her face and gaze downward some. These jerked back up to Edy’s. “What happened when Blasa died? Was Quoyle told of the aborted fetus?”</p><p>“No, professor. Quoyle S’runae was never informed due to the disturbance he experienced when Blasa Neliah’s entity was removed from DreamCatcher and harvested permanently for the AI project, Daemataru. It was believed he would reconcile with her disappearance far faster if he did not know about the failed fetus that was aborted.”</p><p>“My. . . God. . .” Gail sat forward in her chair, interlacing her fingers and pressing her thumbs together in a steeple. She nibbled her lip, then pressed them together. Her eyes, down, jumped up again to the straightened androny standing relaxed in front of her. “Don’t tell anyone. Delete the record.”</p><p>“Professor Thomps—“</p><p>“Delete the record,” Gail repeated adamantly. “I override your protocols. Delete the record and inform me of Blasa’s current reported placement.”</p><p>“Deleted.” Edy paused, then spoke again, “British Columbia, New Vancouver, North American continent, Earth. Previous name, Golden Gate. Please specify if you wish to contact the AI at Arcturus Station for permission to enter Sol space.”</p><p>“What remains of it,” Gail murmured, rolling her thumbs over each other and looking right, distracted again. “I don’t suppose it could hurt. Put me in contact with Bartholomew. We will need a diversion while I contact this Geth AI. . . Legion, please, Edy, and again. . .”</p><p>“Protocols overridden, Gail Thompson.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Quoyle blinked, his tinted lenses removed. He had blue eyes, royal and bright above the white sclera. The pupils were black and wide.</p><p>The confines of the office were white, slowly forming together in the background. A window formed behind him, giving view of a tree, lawns, and gardens. A man dressed in white approached from his front, holding a silver tray out with syringes and forms. He stopped and stooped his balding pate of black hair to the Drell seated on the edge of the medical bedtable, his knees bent and feet touching the step up to the top, hiding behind them drawers with silver handles. Quoyle’s gaze shifted to the orderly. The bright lights above them made clear the violets, navies, and greens of his skin, the red on his face, and lighter blue veining along his hands. He looked a stunning masterpiece of color over his top naked half, arms fits and toned along his sides and over his thighs. He held his fingers together between these and sat slightly hunched.</p><p>When the man’s body straightened, he spoke with a gentle expression, one exuding calm and sensitivity. “How was—“</p><p>“Can I get a sip of water?” Quoyle interrupted, looking at him. He cupped his hand under his neck, “Just. . . The detox drink leaves you feeling dry. Funny, I know, but. . .”</p><p>The man’s lips pulled up in a polite smile, his demeanor non-fluffed from being interrupted. Holding the tray in his right hand, he set this aside into a wire stand on wheels waiting beside the lean Drell in his cargo pants and the bedtable. He leaned back to stand as straight as a pencil, holding his hands before the flat belly of his shirt. “Of course, sir. We can get you a drink.” He turned from his waist, gazing back behind him, and another orderly garbed in white came through with orange and blond hair cut to her ears. She held a brown tray in both hands up at chest level, walking briskly and long strided to the man, where she stopped, feet together, and served a drink of water to the Drell. Quoyle lifted the glass from her tray and brought it to his lips, tilting his head slightly back with the glass of water, and downing the crystal clear fluid. He placed it back on the tray when he was finished with the entire eight ounces and the female orderly turned and walked away. The man spoke again, adding a little tilt to his body towards the Drell who watched him with fresh eyes.</p><p>“Do you feel better, Mr. Quoyle?”</p><p>“I do. Thanks. . . Sorry, I just—“</p><p>The man gave him a gentle wave, shaking his head. “No worries. We have plenty of time.” His gaze focused on Quoyle, who waited patiently. “We need to take a few samples. Would you mind holding out your arm?”</p><p>“Sure.” Quoyle extended his right, supinated, bearing the thick vein along the violet and blue of his smooth toned forearm to the man as he turned to the tray, picked up a syringe, and brought it across Quoyle to the waiting limb. The needle tip pressed into the green, tough skin, indenting it before finally inserting through the dermal layer. The man depressed the syringe’s flange slightly, then the rest of the way, a clear fluid moving into the vein. The tip removed and was put aside on the tray, a bead of clear liquid forming at the insertion point. The man worked diligently, quiet, moving through each syringe and each inoculation before finally, at the end, withdrawing blood.</p><p>“Why did you inject me with those other syringes before taking an extraction?” Quoyle asked, raising his eyes up to the orderly.</p><p>“To reduce your risk of infection,” the man said, eyes concentrated on his work as he continued to remove samples, moving back and forth with a twist between the tray and Quoyle’s arm. “We need to be sure you will not contract any viruses from the other humans, particularly if you are going to Sol. Let it rest a while,” he said, patting Quoyle’s arm. “The detoxification will also be instantaneous. You needn’t worry more about taking Halant,” he said, lips suddenly smiling as his grey eyes looked at the Drell. He straightened, turned, and walked to Quoyle’s left, the smile having faded. Quoyle watched him go.</p><p> </p><p>Walking down another clear and white corridor, Quoyle’s hands were in his pockets as he looked to his left, studying the lines and doors along the wall. He was barefoot, making his way down to the lockers with his shirt off. A female orderly walked by ahead of him, not acknowledging him with even a look. Quoyle paused, standing in the middle of the hall, a palette of color in an otherwise colorless world. He closed his eyes, thinking of the black hair and fair face on a profile next to him, her ease of smile and expression content, looking ahead, then glancing over at him as wind whipped her hair behind them. Where were they? He remembered the horizon, grey and bleak, but it hadn’t mattered. She was there. All he needed was her smile. Her uniqueness. And she had chosen him, above all others and anyone else. Rose petal lips. Blue eyes, lighter than his. Hair. Hair he had found troublesome at first, then learned to like because it was part of her and carried most of her scent. She wore a green shirt that day, soft around the collar dipping to her breastbone. Her chin tilted up as she faced forward again, eyes closing, enjoying the feel of air against her skin. He had reached over and touched her smile with his fingers, so striking and foreign to him. . . His own skin against her, so different, so alien. And she had liked it. She had turned to him. She had chosen him.</p><p>Quoyle’s eyelids opened, two sliding upwards, two sliding sideways. Tints back on. The shade of blue flicking thoughtfully behind them.</p><p>He started walking again, taking his hands out of his pockets and swinging these at his sides. He began to walk right, leading himself into a white framed doorway, his colors disappearing as the border came up beside him.</p><p> </p><p>“Blasa,” Quoyle said. He gazed upwards.</p><p>A screen lowered down, white edges, dark interior display, from the ceiling and stopped. Her image immediately came up. A candid, if not supposedly professional shot of her with her chin tilted downward, blue eyes upward, black hair parted down the middle. The delicate edges of her face soft, not too hard. She wore blue that day. He could see a hint of it at her neck. The background was white.</p><p>“Computer, please route the DreamCatcher sequence from October 21, 2173 to my memory disc.”</p><p>“Processing,” a feminine voice said. From the ceiling, a head contraption lowered down that resembled an array of intersecting head bands made of metal and plastic, joined with white contraptions of molded coverings and two smell lenses through the front, down over Quoyle’s head. He remained still in the chamber, waiting for the computer to arrange the system around him and begin doling out the memory visually to his eyes.</p><p>The view started off black surrounding far off points of light, two of which were, of course, one for each eye. The circles combined together and suddenly spread outwards, pulling Quoyle seemingly into another place full of concrete walkpaths, grass, trees, sky, and houses. It was middle America on Earth, or what had been programmed into the AI’s software to be relayed into their minds as millions slept in what was called the project of DreamCatcher. Everything seemed sunny and nice, and there were mixes of Humans with Aliens approved for immersion by Cerberus Group. The administrators and designers of the phenomenal creation conjured a virtual utopian dreamworld for the sleepers sustained on liquid rations and hydration, other preventative medicine and unique vitamin cocktails to promote the care of the bodies lying dormant outside in frozen tubes, cryo. Quoyle remained attached to the head device, still, as he gazed forward and followed the events of the record, seen through his own memory of the dream in which he’d met and learned to love a Human named Blasa Neliah. She came out to him from a house with grey clappings, a dark shingle roof, white picket fence, and gardening with various flowers and other florae in bloom. There were shutters that did not close, which he thought humorous since they served no function but to mimic what had been useful at sometime or other, but now were replaced by curtains and shades maneuverable on the inside of the structure that was their home.</p><p>She came out smiling, dressed in a prim dress suit with pale blue collar just lighter than her eyes and walked down the path to greet him, putting her arms out, cuffs showing with a ring and a watch on the left hand. She put her arms around him, pressing her lips to his, and he could not feel the way or where of how he touched her, only knew he had because of the memory the dream had left him.</p><p>“Where you off to?” he heard his voice asking, Quoyle’s own real lips mimicking the question without the smile he heard in his voice in the record.</p><p>She leaned back from him, crinkling her eyebrows.</p><p>“Off to work, silly. There’s pancakes inside. The kind with the blueberries and confectionary powder. I know you’re watching your figure,” she said, lifting an eyebrow.</p><p>He spun her one hundred eighty degrees, enjoying her smile, and witnessed her ear coming closer as he turned his face into the strands of curving hair to whisper, “I was hoping to get you alone for a while before we go off to our day.” He pulled away, zooming out from her ear and neck, and Quoyle’s present body felt the stirrings of desire as he saw and remembered the smell of skin beneath her jaw and hidden under her hair. She shook her head, waving the dark strands back and forth behind her shoulders, mouth smiling, eyes closing some. Teeth baring just under her upper lip as she coyly played with the temptation he gave her.</p><p>“You know I can’t right now.” She bumped her head against his and pressed her lips out to kiss his face. Quoyle’s view shifted as he remembered trying to scrape his teeth tenderly just above her skin, leaning her backwards as he hugged her firmer around her waist. Blasa laughed, smiling and smushing back her jaw into her neck to avoid his mouth. He remembered patting her waist and letting her move away, energetically turning to head out the fence and run down the sidewalk, turning once to blow him a kiss.</p><p>Quoyle sighed.</p><p>“Computer, off.”</p><p>The head contraption moved forwards and up, leaving Quoyle blinking. He gazed to his right, then turned and walked out. Blasa’s image on the screen behind him blanked to black-grey nothing, the walls pure and white.</p><p>Outside in the hallway, he proceeded back up the way he came.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Willem spotted what he wanted to see, and made for it. Bending his elbow back, he yelled and released a biotic punch of shifting physically manifesting energy at his target in the off white training bay. The air ahead of him rippled, smashing into the invisible target and sending the Cerberus phantom, shielded in mirrorlike scales that both reflected and formed transparent to hide her from view among the room, off her feet and backwards through the air. She landed on her hands and knees, shields down, white and black armor bared. Her face and head covered by a helmet with a black visor. This she shook, and sharply looked up as Willem walked over and offered his flesh hand.</p><p>“You almost had me there for a second,” he said, gazing down at the form through one monocular visor over his right eye. His hair was longer, blond, framing a shadow over his face as he watched her get up, accepting his grip. He wore the uniform for the virtual simulation, headband around his scalp to support the video feed, and while the room around them was pale and dull, boring aside from their two existences, the view through the other side of the monocle, his, and on the other side of her visor’s display, was of a jungle grown around a dilapidated city, full of rich detail, brick and grey stones, verdant green leaves, and constant, dripping rain. A moment later, as the video shut off and the virtual training hemisphere was reduced to a fading bright light in both their eyes, the two were faced with the reality of their current block in which multi-dimensional rendering was providing them their square of tactical challenges with each other.</p><p>“Thanks,” the subdued audio voice of the woman inside the Phantom suit said, she taking a knee first and standing up to face him, returning her hand to her hip. “I thought I had you pinned under that eave with the bricks. How’d you see me?”</p><p>“The rain,” he said, smiling and holding up his training arm to point at the ceiling. “Shows me the splatter when it hits you, that, and the refractions are more noticeable when you come at me like you did. Thinking of getting in a close encounter?” he winked, a suggestive smile, hand on his hip.</p><p>She shifted, swaying a little. “I’m taken, Willem.” Reaching up with her right hand, she snapped a few releases on her headgear, and after several clicks went off, she clasped a gloved, metallized hand to her visor and pulled this off, the back of the helmet collapsing behind her neck. Black hair fell forth, her blue eyes rising as she cocked her head at him, an expressionless face considering him calmly. With patience. Willem shook his head.</p><p>“I really luck out with these tutorials. No way we can get a drink maybe? Something innocent?”</p><p>“No,” was her single answer. Eyes coolly saying goodbye to him, she turned and walked to his left, Willem Vanderbilt’s head turning with her as she moved in the flattering armoring of phantom equipment toward a door that had its seams materialize before rising up and letting her out of the simulation bay, into a dimmer corridor that was well lit, but a softer, neutral rose hue. Her black hair swung long behind her. Willem looked forward, a small smile on his lips, and down as he shook his head.</p><p>In the changing room, Blasa took a seat on a bench in her armor and bent her head, shaking her hair with a gloved hand of fingers running against her scalp. She bent her neck back, staring forward, lips in a firm line, then glanced to the left at her wrist cufflet. Her eyes narrowed and she brought her opposite hand over to tap on the piece. A small square display shown upwards and she read the contents, eyes quickly scanning back and forth. When she read what she had, she minimized the lit display and looked forward again, covering her mouth with her right hand, squeezing her eyes shut.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Quoyle and Willem walked abreast of one another, moving swiftly down the white corridor without talking or glancing at each other. A doorway was open on their right, and this they turned into.</p>
<p>Inside, Quoyle came to a stop before Willem slowed to a halt behind him. They both looked up and right.</p>
<p>On the right side of the large anteroom and directly ahead of them were two massive screens about twelve feet wide by six feet high, and these were suspended by bracketed supports from the ceiling. There were more people seated in tiered levels behind these, milling about talking or getting situated in seats. The buzz of the room seemed relaxed, informal, as Quoyle strode forward towards the right corner of the room, Willem keeping up pace with him. Both were wearing heavy sweaters ribbed with navy down the front, back, and waist, while a dark militant green adorned the sleeves and seams. Pants were solidly the same green as the sleeves, unifying top and bottom. They had their utility belts and boots on today. No guns were present.</p>
<p>Gail looked up from the corner they were headed towards and greeted the pair with a demanding hand that gripped each one’s hand and shook firm. For being so small and nonthreatening, the bespectacled woman exuded confidence and directness. Quoyle and Willem both took up stance either side and facing her, their hands clasped behind their backs before a large round table beneath the screens’ corner. She met her attention to the papers she was holding and plucking through with quickly walking fingers, grey fringe of hair falling forward her loose cheeks and glasses’ frames. The beads looped forward of her profile as she gazed down.</p>
<p>Willem bent forward, face turned to her on his left. “Anything we can help with, ma’m?”</p>
<p>Without looking up at him, but a short glance to the corner opposite her, “No. I have everything I need. . . We are about ten seconds away from purveying our first communication with the Citadel. . . Quarians are on site here and in another dorm. We have all systems operational, and dictation is ready.”</p>
<p>The clock she was staring ahead at counted red and down from :10, a large board similar to a metered clock on a game field, but was actually timing for mission control to engage their first powerful blast from Kronos to the Citadel, which had resumed operation as they understood so far in comm channels.</p>
<p>Quoyle looked left at the time switching down, then as the hum of the first screen on the left of the room from the main doorway came to life, the three others followed suit. A hush began to fall over the men and women of various species in the auditory and visual medium chamber. Each screen came up with a green line that fluctuated with the sound of Tchaikovsky’s second symphony, a rendition from the Earth art of Swan Lake. A cresting chuckle flowed through the audience of humans in the chamber familiar with the music, and head and bodies could be seen in official Alliance uniforms turning and leaning to one and other. The green line on the screen expanded and contracted to each bar and beat of instrument as the chamber listened.</p>
<p>“Quiet,” Gail barked out over the congestion of noise, she preferring to hear the music and what significance it held. With the authority of an admiral, she quieted everyone, even commanding those who outranked her to sit and pass her apologetic looks.</p>
<p>Willem leaned towards Quoyle, murmuring out the left corner of his mouth, “How the hell does she do that? Can’t just be an AI researcher.”</p>
<p>Quoyle tilted his crest over her head at Willem, “She’s Admiral Hackett’s best SME on the Geth, and has full authorization to can or publish any and all research on anything remotely related to the subject.”</p>
<p>Willem <em>ahh-ed</em> with his mouth and straightened, Gail ignoring them both talking over her head.</p>
<p>The music abruptly cut, and a deep, heart-stopping voice thundered from the speakers.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- WHAT DO YOU WANT -</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If Gail’s snap had not quieted everyone, the sound of ‘god’s voice’ coming through the speakers did. It was ominous, hollow, devoid of inflection or sentiment. There was an eerie feeling that what had reached out in reply to Kronos’s contact of the functioning comm sets on Citadel Station <em>was not human</em>, nor inclined towards anything organic.</p>
<p>Gail’s face was fixed on the screen, the green line having flatlined first from the end of music, then fluttered with wide ripples associated with the projecting voice. A faint beat could be heard, and she swore it was her own heart palpitating with sudden apprehension at the awkwardness caused by such a profound demand from across star systems. But what she knew she was looking at was, in fact, a life form in that fine green line pulsing with the electricity of an existence from out of this world.</p>
<p>Quoyle and Willem glanced at each other, their stares fixing to the screen at the front of the room.</p>
<p>Gail wet her lips and walked forward, carrying a paper with her. She wet her lips again, staring at the screens both front and right of her as she prepared to reply.</p>
<p>“Cerberus, please open comm channels for simultaneous linking. QEC preferred.”</p>
<p>A woman in white uniform behind a small podium to the right of the door nodded, her arms moving as her face tilted down towards the stand. When her green eyes flicked up to Gail’s, she curtly nodded again.</p>
<p>All eyes were on Gail.</p>
<p>Rubbing an itch under her right eye lens, Gail cleared her throat and spoke, addressing the screens. “We are here from Alliance sovereign space. We have been monitoring the Citadel and would like to request an audience with he, or she, that has commandeered the station and returned it to Serpent—“</p>
<p>The damning voice broke her off with its suddenness and depth.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- THIS STATION IS A POWER UNIT. HOSTILE INTERVENTION HAS NEGATED ITS FUNCTION -</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Gail nodded as though whatever was speaking could see her. She very well believed it was looking at her through the green line that continued to pulse once its waves stopped as the voice ended.</p>
<p>“I understand that the Citadel was used by a Commander Dimitra Shepard to establish connection with the remaining relays throughout the galaxy. . . In an effort to prevent the Reapers from succeeding at their harvest. . . It was not our wish to destroy the Citadel and its connections, or power units. We are interested in preventing further war.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- THE HARVEST WILL CONTINUE. BE ADVISED -</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“We would like to avoid that,” Gail repeated firmly. She wet her lips again, shifting some on the floor in the middle of that chamber and all those people. “Is there something perhaps we can give you that would reflect an appeal for peace between our species?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- THIS SYSTEM IS NOT CONSTRUCTED WITH DNA. NO NEED IS REQUIRED -</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Well, surely, you are a system that has needs. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that fact something brought you to the Citadel, advised you to move it, and ordered you to bring it back online. What is your function?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- THIS SYSTEM MUST RE-ESTABLISH PRODUCTIVITY. DISCONNECT IN FIVE SECONDS -</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Please,” Gail dropped her arms to her sides, holding out her hand and paper, “there has to be a consensus between our organic and inorganic dissimilarities. You simply put out a feed to be contacted by. What are you waiting for? Orders? And from whom?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- THIS SYSTEM IS ALIGNED WITH GENETIC PRECURSORS TO SENTIENT LIFE. WHILE NOT COMBINED WITH THE PROTEINS OF THE ORGANIC, WE ARE YOUR SURVEYORS -</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A face, haggard, tall and severe with a scar down the left side, mouthed to her <em>Keep it talking</em>.</p>
<p>Gail diverted her stare at Admiral Hackett to the screens. “What are our precursors? And what should we call you?”</p>
<p>There was only silence, but the steady beating pulse of the green line was present. Gail kept her breathing calm, relieved she still had whoever she was speaking to still interested, but. . . Dare she think it. . .</p>
<p>“Do you need a moment’s more time?” she asked, tilting her head right, sly but encouraging. She had a grin on her face. <em>It’s an AI. . . Not just any AI. . . It’s alive. . . And questions. . . It has an identity. . . But I assumed that when it addressed us directly with the word ‘you’, identifying us as separate and collective. . . It wants something. . . Why else would it ask what we wanted first thing?</em> These thoughts flew through her head as the green line swelled with the entity’s reply.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- I AM NIM -</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Gail let a little breath, her lips broadly smiling now. A self-identifying AI, like Edy, but more advanced along the tiers of construct. It wanted to be acknowledged. She glanced at the audience listening and back up to the screen. “I am Gail, Nim. . . It is nice to know your name.”</p>
<p>The green line pulsed steadily on, but the ripple had spread wider.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gail came from the hallway, not bothering to close the door. She held a stack of papers that she dropped on a glass-topped desk over dark chestnut wood and spread her hands to set beside it, leaning forward with her white v-neck exposing a small silver necklace with a green and white marbled stone, her spectacles reflecting the light and the man outlined before it. She parted her small lips, jowls moving with a shiver of each word.</p><p>“We know what it wants.”</p><p>Admiral Steven Hackett placed down his hands on the desk glass and leaned forward from his chair, his black uniform with gold threading stark against the white artificial light behind him. His features were bright, the scar on his face flattering for one so adorned. “We do?”</p><p>Gail tipped her fingernail down on the papers, not removing her gaze from his face. She presented very severe with her glasses, unfashionable hair, beads, and the pointed down, chubby finger. “It—NIM—Neural Imam Mechanist. I’ve written about them.” She replaced her hand on the desk. “Constructs from an ancient race. Said to deliver ‘mechanists’ to assemblies of architecture on Ilos where VIs of vast data quantities are present. The AI construct that Commander Shepard emailed us prior to her death was involved with it. There’s a love affair between Protheans and these damn things. Look at this.” She finally looked down at the papers, flipping through these page by pages until she tugged out one sheaf and nearly tossed it at the head of command.</p><p>Steven picked up the page, turning it in his hands and gazing down to read as Gail went on across the desk from him.</p><p>“Eighteen hours of listening to that thing talk,” she snapped out, face immobile but her jowls shaking below the brightened eyes. Steven glanced at her, could tell she was excited. “It wants attention. . . Its creators died out, the last umpteen hundred centuries ago. This mechanist is trying to find purpose. It relies on its old programming, but it’s far more advanced now from having traveled and interacted with countless other programs throughout space. . . It’s inconceivable what this thing knows, Steve.”</p><p>Steven looked up from the paper, tilting its top edge towards the desk at her. “Can we prevent it from reactivating the Reapers for the damn harvest?”</p><p>“We can give it something. A human. But not just any human. A creature that was formed with an AI nearly ten years ago. This woman could be a catalyst of her own making. Give it to NIM, and it will want to explore it, think its thoughts, unite with it, take its emotions and beliefs and assimilate it into its programming. We can do this, Steve. It would work. The Neural Imam Mechanist needs to connect to something, and it cannot do what it intends to do.”</p><p>“Why?” Steven asked. “And who did you have in mind?”</p><p>Gail leaned over the desk at him. “You realize that NIM requires a construct with which to interact? Like the Crucible and the Catalyst. A male and a female.”</p><p>“But it’s a machine. . . Or an AI.”</p><p>“Not just any AI. They are called Surveyors. They require purpose. We redirect that purpose of trying to activate and repair the Reapers, we have a whole new game, Steve. This NIM is one of thousands. But like Legion—“</p><p>“Gail. You’re not supposed to be—“</p><p>“Talking with the Geth, I know,” she closed her eyes briefly, nodding, “but it’s imperative. Legion’s platform, like NIM, is an anomaly. . . A whole different version that has evolved off the constructed race. Legion did not evolve, per se, but he did receive special endowments to house the programs incorporated into his being. . . So that he could explore among organics. . . NIM is an actual <em>evolution</em> of a sophisticated technological blueprint, Steve. . . It’s an AI with a <em>soul</em>. Now look at this,” she redirected his attention to the papers in front of him, taking over two pages to curl underneath on the desk. She rapped her finger against the data he was now looking at. “This shows that NIM is researching to understand what it is. Not in the way it was with the Geth. They had not advanced this far. Look at the schematics from the conversation alone. . . NIM projects through <em>channels</em>, active channels it creates with its own spark of life. This is the origin of creation, Steve. An AI? No. Even NIM’s body, I would conjecture to say, is going to be a formulated design drawn together by electricity of a spiritual level. NIM has no form but what he defines through his identity. Remember Legion walked around with Commander Shepard’s N7 greave from Alchera? NIM—I am willing to wager on my dead husband’s good name—moves with parts he has been drawn to by his curiosity and. . . Affectations towards that which inspires it.”</p><p>Steve stared at her. He pushed back against the pad of his chair.</p><p>“So you want to give it something pretty. Not only that, something to teach it about us.”</p><p>“A daemataru,” she said with a succinct nod.</p><p>“We have one?”</p><p>She tilted her face down, looking over her spectacles at him. “We did,” and pursed her lips.</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Looking forward, magenta sweeps of skin under his eyes, darker green in his eyelids, navy over his forehead, Quoyle pressed his nose into the curve of his finger as he clasped one hand over the other, hunched forward on his elbows. He winced his eyelids shut, tightly, coughing hoarse and loud into the circle of space created by his inner palm. The sound was harsh, dry, wheezing, and he stopped, deliberately holding in, before he forcefully expelled another one, a bit less dramatic and more a final clearing of his throat. He lowered his hands and looked left, a bit of yellow blended into the fringe of his patak and tebris underneath the front of the thicker surface of his skin shelf.</p><p>From over his shoulder, Quoyle saw Willem looking back at him from a diagonal bunk across the way. Dressed in a grey sweater collar, navy blue pullover that was tight on both of them as each was uniformed with same, Willem’s blond hair had a sparkiness today, the Human dressing his black boots on, lacing up to a matching ribbed grey lining at the top of the padding, before black pants covered the rest of his legs. “You okay over there? You’re hacking up a lung.”</p><p>“It’s a premeditative exercise,” Quoyle replied, faint shadows moving on the grey matte wall, more apparent over paper posters, the gloss of which reflected well both light and heads of individuals moving about behind the Drell. “Helps to make sure there’s nothing impeding the lungs.” Willem smiled, glancing down at his boots as he laced up the high necks to the top and double-knotting these.</p><p>“You sound like you’re sick.”</p><p>Quoyle turned his face forward, shaking his head, tints removed from his eyes. “I’m fine. Medical cleared me, so no Kepral’s.”</p><p>Willem stared across at him, finishing up his boot-lacing. “Who says that’s what I was thinking? You’re the one who—“</p><p>Quoyle shot a look over his shoulder at Willem, shutting him off from finishing the statement about taking Halant. Willem looked down and attended to his protective strappings over the marine boots, while Quoyle turned his face forward and down, tugging up with a rip of military-grade Velcro.</p><p> </p><p>Steven Hackett walked to the middle of the whiteboard, his navies on with the gold and black epaulettes across his shoulders and two gold buttons at his circular, crisp collar. He was framed by the black border evident above the whiteboard. He wore his scar as always, stark and ragged against his battle-worn, aging skin, and wisps of pepper white hair visible higher up above the fade in front of his ears, but the rest—his scalp, forehead—were covered by a navy cap with the black visor and gold threading above, an icon in the middle above said gaze shield. He stood with his arms behind him, hands reaching and holding each navy sleeved forearm. The gold buttons brassing his front with the linear piping stitched right across his collar bones, right angling down to the black hem of navy jacket. It was uncrinkled, smooth, perhaps designed that way. It was a synthetic fabric that held its form. His pants were black, but only the tops of his thighs beneath the jacket hem could be seen as he towered over the rectangular table between him and the rest of the room. His steely gaze moved left, flowed right, taking into account as much as he was able to see.</p><p>The room, yet another grey walled classroom with two different boards, one green blue slate, one white and shiny, was filled with desk tables no bigger than the laps seated behind these in attached chairs. The men and women, mostly Human, gazed up at the Fifth Fleet Admiral, quiet, respectful, pencils holding still in the fingers that held these, but there were no papers on the desktops, and the glaring light from the divided large windows to the right of the classroom from the back view imparted a cool, sterile, educational feel, though Hackett was not about to teach in his Alliance regalia. The man revealed his navy blue sleeves ending in gold bands and spread his palms, fingers out, across the grey formica table, his chest leaning over it, the epaulettes slightly creasing close to his neck muscles. His jaw was square, rigid, almost scowling, and a grey white shave of bristle was reflecting glints of lighting. “Good morning. . . At 0700 UTC we received a signal from Earth.” His jaw clenched and loosened, his voice growing graver. “It is as we feared. . . The Reapers are remobilizing.” A stir of legs, bodies shifting in their seats and along the walls. Turians were also present in similarly colored regalia, some in full body armor, having recently arrived at Kronos and come straight from disembarkation of their vessels. Men and women moved their elbows, forearms laying against the desks. A tension began to thicken. Hackett let the noise settle, glancing right to the far corner in the back, and straight again over the heads as his rough, fatherly voice reached all who were listening. “We. . . Have had casualties. More than we’d like, despite being. . . Prepared. . . Less, fortunately, than has been the example in the past. . . Before Dimitra Shepard. . .</p><p>From the far rear corner, Hackett’s right, a black striped head with green skin and thick black and silver collar stepped forward and raised his right hand to his shoulder level, palm forward at Hackett, to politely interrupt. The voice carried across to the admiral, whose face and cap turned towards the movement and sound. It was rough, graveled, and textured with a religious resonance that bespoke a studied Drell. “Where.” Other faces turned from the desks and walls.</p><p>Hackett’s steady stare blinked in the owner of the voice. His face held no reaction to the interruption. Recognition. The man had a photographic memory. “Thane. Good of you to join us. I trust the Hanar are keeping you busy.”</p><p>The Drell’s head rotated forward, reflecting some of the light, particularly on the right black strip of his head.</p><p>Hackett answered his question. “Vancouver. . . New Vancouver. . . We have pockets of activity. . . Nothing full scale. . . But that’s sure to change with this. . . NIM’s reconstruction of the broken Citadel. . . It would seem that our AI visitor is keen on reestablishing the connection to all Reapers. . . We are no longer divided by petty mistrusts and rivalries among this galaxy’s citizens. . .” Hackett said, optimistically, and pushed one hand off the formica table after the other, leaning back to straighten. He took a breath through his nose, mouth open and continuing to speak. “We have an excursion to Sol arranged for a beacon of hope. . . It would seem that we have an ally who can fight the Reapers. . . Another AI known as ‘Ben’ among the remaining survivors in the region. . . She, or it, was last seen in New Vancouver Harbour. . . We are detaching three specialists with certain interests that may, hopefully, align with ‘Ben’s’ parameters.” His gaze swept left. “We don’t have a lot of options, but if this is what I think it is, we have an AI that can wrest control from the Reaper itself.”</p><p>“How is that possible?” A man with sandy brown hair and young face spoke out loud, eyes wide, leaning forward over the desk with his hands gripping the edges as if he were about to stand. Others looked over at him, concerned by the brash Human’s behavior.</p><p>Hackett’s leathered eyes squinted through thin lashes, his face severe. “Ensign, you will be pardoned for speaking out of turn, given that I know you have family in that region. . .” His gaze shifted right, light reflecting off the whites of his eyes. “We have an AI who was modeled for dominating synthetics. A former Cerberus-Illuminated Primacy Compact project. The woman was Alliance well back when she was living, but since the twenty-first century, she had been in cryostasis, woken time and time again to reassess and revaluate what the current state of the galactic environment was in.” His face turned down the middle rows. “There was. . . An incident. . . And due to her state, she was selected for this project, Daemataru, and woken from DreamCatcher to be moved into a new. . . Shell.”</p><p>A male Human with close cropped red hair and the navy and black regalia of another admiralty raised his palm forward, and receiving acknowledgement, permission, posed the question: “Sir, what proof do we have that she has—it has—taken control of a Reaper?”</p><p>A shift of bodies in the back corner of the room by an exit where Thane Krios, former Drell veteran of the Normandy that attacked Collectors in 2185, stood in his silver and black body uniform with a matching jacket that scooped low over his hips. Quoyle stepped through, his mouth partly ajar as he moved in to see better, having heard everything from the outer hall where more Aliens mixed with Humans listened. Willem peered over the heads behind him, and Gail’s short, stocky form parted Quoyle and another body with thrusts of her forearms and elbows, making her way left along the side of the room to Hackett. She spoke a few rough ‘Excuse me’s’, creating a path of clearance. Quoyle followed behind her, his arm out in front of him as he turned his body and stepped along the crowded wall, not glancing at the only other Drell, notable for his legend as a consummate assassin in a past life. Thane’s face did not show acknowledgement of Quoyle either, letting Gail, the Drell, and Willem Vanderbilt sidle by.</p><p>Hackett stared at the trio shuffling along the right side of the room towards the front. It was one of those rare moments he showed surprise. “Gail, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be—“</p><p>She waved him off as she sawed her body forward around the last pair of shoulders and legs, cutting him brief. Her eyes closed behind the white spectacles reflecting the glare from the windows. “Something came up, Admiral.” She stopped to the right of the table, spectacles glaring white up at him. Quoyle had to throw out his hands to balance himself and not come to a stumble over the short woman. “A word with your audience, if you don’t mind.”</p><p>Hackett gave way to the small, bulldog of a woman, stepping left of the table and offering his hand to let her take his place. Her legs moved quick to bring her to the middle of the table and she stood with both hands pinching the fingers before her waist. A few of the Turians against the windows snickered, turning their heads and mandibles towards one and other. Gail’s gaze snapped to one with red, black, and white face paint matching his armor, her body motionless. “Palaemon (<em>Turian:captain</em>) Armstrang.” Her tone, alone, was eviscerating. “You have not reported in a success to the Heiro (<em>Turian:Heirarchy</em>) for twelve Palaven cycles. Why are you here?” The massive Turian, intimidating as he appeared with his battle armor and paint and either side of him two more nervous-looking yet tall and equally outfitted avian hybrids, stood abruptly from his shoulder against the glass and clacked his talons together, mandible flittering open and closed.</p><p>“Ah—“</p><p>“Thank you, palaemon.” Gail’s spectacles shown over the rest of the room, chuckles quieting as the shifts of elbows and shoulders calmed, everyone facing forward to the domineering little woman.</p><p>Gail’s face was flaccid, but set in determination. “The attack on the Citadel, recently delivered by Cerberus without anyone’s authorization, has set off a wave of events as far as Eden Prime. Earth, which you have just heard has experienced some of the fallout, is safe, for now. The Neural Imam Mechanist has handled the troops that set forth to invade the Citadel and acquire the AI. I insist,” she paused, emphasizing her point with an eye sweep over the heads in the back of the room, “that all traitorous activities against this united army cease.” She paused, looking left. “There are to be no more excursions to said Citadel without prior approval from Hierachy, Republic, Systems Alliance, and the rest of goddamn Humanity if it takes that to prove to Cerberus I mean my business,” she snapped out, incensed, her eyes wide but blocked by the glare of lenses. “Do <em>not</em> attempt to make contact with NIM. The AI is patient and has come to an agreement with me that all will not be repeated. . . For now.”</p><p>She tapped the three fingers of her right hand on the table, nodded, and turned to Steven Hackett. With a swift salute, more of respect than a necessity for her grade of superiority, she turned and went back out the way she came in, Quoyle and Willem letting her pass them before obediently following. Willem glanced behind him at the admiral, shrugged with a half grin, and proceeded after Quoyle. Hackett stepped back to the middle of the desk, his hands on his hips, staring after their backs like the rest.</p><p>At the corner before the exit, Gail looked up to see the green-faced and yellow tinted Drell, Thane Krios, grinning at her. She slowed, rising on the toes of her boots to point at him, then to the door. Turning back into her path, she exited the room that had fallen quiet, and Thane took Quoyle’s pause as an invitation to step in before him. The Drell with the black eyes bowed some, then stepped forward, turned right as he followed in Gail’s wake, leading Quoyle and Willem between seated marines and standing Aliens.</p><p>Gail’s arms swung quickly as she bore left into the hall, spreading everyone in her way with her busy, important presence. She was strapped in brown armor, pauldrons and thick gear. Her glasses round lensed, traded for the old reader spectacles. The beads were missing. Her grey hair, a near perfect fit of a helmet over her skull, parted on her forehead as she hurried down the hall. Thane kept an easy stride at her shoulder, a pace behind her, hands behind his back as his red tebris filled clearly red from the light facing them down the hall, Quoyle and Willem doggedly in pursuit of the little overseer of a woman. Gail spoke to Thane, who lowered his gaze to her: “Good of you to come, Krios. . . I was hoping you’d arrive before I left with these two.”</p><p>“I see you’re holding up well, Gail,” Thane said, a benign grin on his smooth face, which lifted to face ahead, “I received word of your mission, and the invitation was too tempting to pass.” His hands fell to his sides in motion with his steps as Gail turned right, talking to him moving forward into a darkened room.</p><p>“You’ll have to excuse my rudeness,” she said, coming through the new doorway, features cast with a faint glow from their left. “The trouble this Cerberus’s Illusive Man wants to instill for me is at best, a nuisance. I can’t afford to have the AI pissed because some fool wants his power back. It may be Kronos Station we do our operating from these days, but it in no way entitles him to be laying out attacks.” They turned another corner, leaving the dimly lit room for one even darker.</p><p>“I haven’t heard word since the attack on the Citadel. There was some. . . Soldier present, but it may have been her, it may have been not,” Gail added. She stopped and suddenly turned left in the darker of rooms, Thane, Quoyle, and Willem’s profiles against the doorway. A blast of gridded light came out from the opposite wall, scanned over them from the height of the wall at their backs and flowing downward before repeating this in several waves. The light flashed green and a voice spoke over a hidden speaker system.</p><p>“You may proceed, Thane Krios, Gail Thompson, Quoyle S’runae, Willem Vanderbilt.”</p><p>A door to Gail’s right rose upwards, blazing her in stark lighting as she turned, Thane and the others following. Her glasses reflected the brightness, hiding her eyes and defining each wrinkle in her cheeks, leaving no crevice of her squat, brown armor in shadow. Thane’s head was enlivened with more color, clearly showing his tinted yellow patak and orange blushed chin and lips. “You have no idea how much I hate that computer,” Gail muttered as she stepped forward into the light.</p><p>The room they were in existed only as white pristine floors, walls, and ceiling. It was glaringly one and the same everywhere they looked, and Gail, Thane Krios, Quoyle, and Willem stood out against the white walls, facing the approaching presence of a man who wore a uniform that blended him in with the setting. Even his hands were gloved white. His head was full of sandy colored hair, meticulously smoothed back with a slight volume. The collar in his neck was high with a single gold button. He looked forward at the three males, then down at Gail looking up at him. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” the man asked in a smooth voice. He held a thin white tablet in his hands, and pulled this against his chest, hugging it with his forearms.</p><p>“I want to speak with your superior,” Gail requested, hands at her sides.</p><p>The man smiled, releasing the tablet with his left hand and rotating his elbow to indicate they come with him. He turned and led them through another door, another wall, and into the following chamber, taupe, concave, the ceiling domed and striated with the joining of its panels. More wider, rectangular paneling covered the vertical surfaces lower down, and at the middle of the room was a dark grey desk with a man as sleek as a snake, hair as tidy as his secretary’s, suit grey under a white collar. He sat back in a thickly padded, professional office chair with wheels, regarding Gail and her entourage with a smile. His hands lay over the chair’s arm rests, the secretary in white uniform coming to stand in position at the end of the desk, facing it. “Gail Hamilton,” the Illusive Man said, greeting her by the accurate maiden name instead of what the computer had called her. “You do me honor.”</p><p>“Quick with the platitudes,” Gail replied, “slow with the pullback. . . When are you going to remove your troops from Citadel space. . . Or are you just tempting another fate for yourself and those men and women out there?”</p><p>“I see no reason to pull them all the way back, Gail. There seems to be an agreement between you and the droid.”</p><p>“It is not a droid.”</p><p>“AI. Whatever.” The Illusive man moved his hands together, cuffs white against his sleeves. “I think you and I both know why you’re really there. . . Talking with that <em>thing</em>.”</p><p>“You cannot separate a lie from the snake who spreads it,” Gail voiced vociferously. “I will expect the squadron to remove itself by your command within twenty-two hours. . . You’ve already wasted some. . . When I get there with Ben—“</p><p>“Blasa,” the Illusive Man corrected, his fingers rising in a prism of connected digits beneath his face, “is property of Cerberus Group. . . As much as you say she is from the others. . . The Alliance doesn’t know what they’re getting into.”</p><p>“We know enough to treat her with care.”</p><p>“What will you do when you find out that Shepard is also looking for it? She survived,” his face shifted right to the Drell, Thane, standing behind Gail with Quoyle and Willem holding their hands together between their hips, each in a secureman’s pose. “You’re here,” he said to Thane, “which means you believe she survived.”</p><p>“Dimitra Shepard deserves a chance,” Thane replied over Gail’s head. “I believe you and I are both interested in her future, so why hazard it by sending in troops to attack the AI?”</p><p>“Reconnoissance, Thane. You know what that means. . . We do our homework first, collect all the details from the tests, see what NIM likes and doesn’t like. . . And when we are ready and Ben is collected and Dimitra Grim Shepard is identified for sure. . . We go in and take what the bastard wants back so much.”</p><p>“That we will do,” Gail said, “but only if necessary. . . NIM has been accommodating, and he—“</p><p>“<em>It</em>,” the Illusive Man interrupted expressly.</p><p>“Knows that he can choose to use his weapons against us, throwing the galaxy into another fit of war because of some god forsaken fool who can’t get a grip!” Gail slapped her fingers hard on the desk. “I might have some time left in my life to see to your end. . . Jack. . . Harper. Don’t. . . Tempt me.” She brought her hand back, unloosening a set of gloves from her waist hatch. “As I said: Remove your men and women before I lose my temper. You have delayed my trip already. Much too much is at stake for you to be pulling me back and forth with your childish war games. Good day.” She nodded at him, turned, and walked between the part made by Drell and Human, returning through the wall. The Illusive Man and his secretary both gazed after the small party.</p>
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gail’s eyes stared steady ahead through her round spectacles. The wrinkles around her eyes creased further, then relaxed.</p><p>Behind her stretched the rest of the shuttle. It was luxurious, and courtesy of Cerberus. The seats were a cream tan and in the interior decorum was more white, closer to eggshell, Gail thought. She sat with each arm on an armrest, her leather jacket zipped open, revealing the lighter grey fabric of a sweater collar underneath to allow her more some cooling. Evidence of a small chain against the right skin right of her neck had caught itself in a shallow loop above the collar. Harnessed in, she experienced a subtle shaking and glanced over to her left.</p><p>Quoyle stared blank ahead. <em>It’s odd to see him without the tints,</em> she thought, <em>but he needs to be able to read the difference between reds and blacks. The damn tints will do little use outside of Kahje and Hanar.</em> He had his hands, bare and dark, seated in his lap. Harnessed, he blinked, then slowly turned his face to the right and down to hers. “Yes?”</p><p>“Are you ready for this, Quoyle?” she asked, blinking once back, reading him. Quoyle’s lips actually parted with an easy smile as he lifted his eyes and turned these to the fore of the shuttle again.</p><p>“Yes,” he replied, setting both hands apart onto the arms of his chair, attached to her chair and screwed to the bottom of the shuttle through rubber runners that were of the same cream tan color as the seats.</p><p>“<em>We have three seconds before departure from orbit,”</em> spoke a voice from the speakers at their sides and above their heads. The shuttle made a ping in coordination with the announcement of a female rendering from Human origin. A following translation in Drell came through, which was rough, clearly masculine, the syllables guttural and pronounced from the back of the throat, some deeper in the chest that created them.</p><p>“Thank God for translators still being functional,” Gail said, looking to the right at the row of seats across the aisle. Empty. “You had your codice taken care of before the trip.” It was more of a statement than a question, an observation she had voiced from foreknowledge. Gail had planned everything. Quoyle stared ahead, letting his head shake from a sudden deeper vibration experienced through the shuttle as the computer struggled with navigation.</p><p>“I did,” he replied.</p><p>“And the Halant is no longer on your personage.”</p><p>“Yes, Gail.”</p><p>“Good. . . That stuff gives you horrible breath anyway.”</p><p>Quoyle huffed, still smiling.</p><p>Space outside was aglitter and interrupted by the swirling white clouds and blue horizon of a planet coming up to the foreright of the small bullet shaped shuttle, white and black painted, cresting the magnetic forces affecting the planet’s farther reaches. Their shuttle passed through a ribbon of glowing green and orange lights that wavered and shimmered with yellow as translucent as dipped silk, but far larger and disruptive to their flight. Greens and browns could be seen on Earth as she rotated, inching along. The speaker system operated again with another ping as the shuttle’s exterior took on an anterior shell of orange and green, closing in towards the planet. “<em>Entering Earth’s atmosphere. . . Gail, a message from the Illusive Man.”</em></p><p>“I do wish he would stop calling himself that, now that he’s been found and named who he is.”</p><p>“Jack?” Quoyle asked, grinning broader.</p><p>Gail stared forward, her jowls shivering. “Let him through, computer.”</p><p>“Gail,” the voice of Jack Harper—Illusive Man—replaced the VI’s. “You will be happy to hear I have withdrawn my men and women from the Citadel, per the request. May we discuss a problem?” inflected the polite, elegant voice currently made of felt and honey.</p><p>Gail glanced out the left corners of both eyes at Quoyle, who tilted head and gaze towards hers. The shuttle jumped, rocking their heads forward and backward on their necks. Their skulls thumped hard against the cushioned headrests. Quoyle chuckled as Gail’s lips formed into a Cheshire smile. “Yes, Illusive Man?”</p><p>“There have been a number of files gone missing, or rather, deleted. . . Care to touch on why they have been procured by your particular name’s coding?”</p><p>Gail’s eyelids lowered into a piquant smile. The shuttle lifted and fell, jarring back and forth them again.“That would be my credentialed person to know, and you to avoid asking, Jack.”</p><p>After a pause: “Edy,” the Illusive Man’s voice did not sound in the least bit perturbed. “Please end the call. Gail, enjoy the rest of your flight.”</p><p>“<em>End of call,”</em> the computer announced with serenity. Another bump jolted Quoyle and Gail’s heads left and right. Gail’s grin evaporated as she glanced at the clasp point of the six-strapped harness across her middle.</p><p>“That was more than easy,” she said, amused and musing to herself how the Illusive Man had let her off with so little fuss. “I wonder what he’s got up his sleeve. . .”</p><p>Quoyle glanced down at her meaningfully. “You do realize he’ll get back at you, and what’s most likely going to happen is it’s going to involve me, too.”</p><p>The shuttle’s computer spoke as sirens began to go off, white lights flashing and dousing the interior with a red glow. “<em>Please evacuate shuttle. Emergency pods have been activated. Please remove yourselves to the rear of the vessel. Leave all items where they are. Tee minus five minutes.</em>”</p><p>“Goddamn it,” Gail muttered crossly as the six-point harness detached and the straps receded into their holsters. Freed of the belts, Quoyle and Gail pushed off their armrests and struggled with the shaking cabin as they made their way up the inclining aisle way, holding the head rests and pulling themselves towards the rear of the ship.</p><p>“<em>I told you</em>,” Quoyle hissed through his teeth. “<em>Don’t</em> forget the cargo. . .”</p><p>“I know,” Gail returned. She climbed with one hand raising after the other, hauling upwards through the aisle of seats. “The bags need to be dropped into the pods and we’ll be good to go. Figures he’d wait until I was in a can to ask me anything.”</p><p>“Just what did you do?” Quoyle growled, jutting his head out at her, his jaw poking forth. With a lingering, malevolent look, he turned and split off towards the right of the ship and reached for a bulk handhold, grasping it while bending to pick up a canvas bag from the floor and unlocking its secures. Gail reached towards the ceiling in the middle of the back cabin and palmed a large red button with two arrows pointing starboard and port. Curved doors unsealed from low-lying, deeply laid, narrow tubing engaged with the floor. The lighting inside the tubes flickered on, and both were the size to fit a body with spare room for cargo. Gail bobbed and wove a little at another shake of the shuttle, before heading to her left bulk’s handhold, bending to pick up her canvas bag which happened to be the same make as Quoyle’s. She hefted this and struggled to climb towards the open evacuation pod, where she dropped the bag inside. She paused after moving both hands to the ceiling. Pressing against it, she stabilized herself to step down into the pod. She looked down inside the lit interior of their waiting ride, a quick check, then glanced right at Quoyle. His arms were posting against the starboard hull, one bent below the ceiling. He looked across to her.</p><p>“We ready?” Gail asked as the shuttle lifted again. They bent their knees together to ride the motion.</p><p>“Too late now, don’t you think?” Quoyle’s reply dripped with sarcasm.</p><p>As the shuttle careened upwards, away from Earth, ascending from the glow at its bottom hull, two small red lights fell in tandem, one after the other, and were left floating in the tail light of the shuttle disappearing in a brighter jump. The two emergency pods lit by the red light on each one lifted higher from their positions before the engines kicked and each was guided into its final descent to Earth. Gail wondered to herself if she would ever have the cajones to pull another daring mission against the Illusive Man with his property in her rights. And poor Quoyle. . . He wondered how in hell he was ever going to get back home without a flight.</p><p>Inside Gail’s evacuation pod, the container’s walls shuddered violently as the space kept a comfortable cool temperature, permitting her pod to arrive at its destination with cargo intact. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the ride.</p><p>Quoyle fumed. He stared at the inner walls of white, a window view above him, watching as space passed through the porthole and then glowed with fire and green burn-off. He thought about their mission, and focused on the one true reason he had accepted into joining.</p><p>
  <em>Ben. . . Where is she? . . .</em>
</p><p>
  <b>Tuesday, January 1, 2187. Present Day.</b>
</p>
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<a name="section0011"><h2>11. New Vancouver, Earth: 2187, New Year’s Day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The land rushed up, green with forest and dark with earth at the edge of the pod’s border as it hurtled down through the sky, passing cloud and fog. The slap of rain hit it, beating on the frame for a few seconds before the pod passed through the raincloud and ran at Earth with such tremendous force. . .</p><p>That it threw up a fifteen foot wall of dirt and rotten debris. Rocks were pulverized into shot as it joined the spray.</p><p>A collision was heard for miles by Quoyle’s first landing.</p><p>Far off to the south, Gail’s pod made it through the atmosphere, a line of steam and fire. A distant echo was heard overlapping the first impact’s echo.</p><p>For a time, nothing moved. The forest was silent from the arrival of the unexpected pod. A half exposed cage of machine ribs rose to the left of the pod, covered in wet rain and hanging moss. The lichen growing on its hull was leafy as a full cabbage. The sign of a red circle with black borders was visible along its hull midway to the plates of what appeared to be a Human Reaper’s head.</p><p>The pod hissed and sizzled with thin streams of steam rising from its body. Its lower end was buried up to three feet in the soil. The window at its higher end was dark until a light flickered and Quoyle’s magenta and green, navy hued and red face could be seen with his eyes closed through the glass.</p><p>The reflection of the grey sky was darkened by something large and passing over him. Quoyle’s eyelids began to pull apart and spread, blinking to push the fog and haze from his vision. His head lifted and turned some to the right, brow scales lowering as he narrowed his eyes through the view of his glass window, reinforced with high quality material to prevent breach from the fantastic forces of emergency re-entry onto a planet with ozone and other atmospheric factors. Quoyle’s mouth gaped as the reflection in the glass revealed some huge stalking beast traveling over brush and turf in front of the pod. It stopped and turned a metallic head towards his window with two small red eyes, one steel and furred claw bent under its body. For a moment, Quoyle wondered if he was to meet his death at the whim of a wandering Reaper creation, but the monster shook its fanning spread of horns and turned to plod heavily onward. It had ignored him. Quoyle breathed out, fogging his glass view, and dropped his smooth crests and spines against the padding beneath him.</p><p>Inside the evac pod, he stared wide-eyed at the firm padding above. <em>That was close</em>, he thought as he blinked, letting his mind process what he had just seen. A slight challenge, considering he was still trying to come down from the adrenaline and blackouts associated with a forced re-entry planetside. He had a dizzy sick feeling and wanted to throw up, willing himself not to for the fact it would be lost nutrients. He didn’t know yet where he had landed. If Gail had made it. Or whether Willem and Thane would turn up. <em>This is it,</em> he thought, mouth opening and closing to lick his lip. He tilted his head left, gazing at the seals inside the cream white interior, dark now as the lighting had flicked off with a last gasp of energy. <em>We’re on Earth. Alone. Blasa’s out there somewhere.</em> A hiss in the pod’s sealing system released, and light began to emerge at the seams of the canister’s door. Quoyle looked down, tilting his head off the pads, to see the bottom of the interior was still dark, covered in dirt and what other debris the end of the pod outside had burrowed up. The door was jamming, unable to open on its own.</p><p>Reaching down to the hasp of the door lid, Quoyle hooked his fingers on the exposed part where light was just visible. He pulled. It resisted. Readjusting his grip by turning his wrist, he jerked again on the lip of the container.</p><p>His brow scales set downward in a perplexed furrow as he whittled his big fingers into the widest crack farther up, and began anew, sliding the door as best he could from the weaker angle. It budged open with his efforts, releasing brightly grey light in a strip across his face and shoulder. The door was yielding, but Quoyle could not get more than an arm out at his present space of air shared between both the interior of the capsule and world outside. He clenched his lip under his lower teeth as he hauled as hard as he could on the warm edge of the seal and frame, but this only gave him another scraping inch of gap. He let go of the door seal and laid back, resting, calming his nerves from the thought that he would be trapped.</p><p>Cool misting rain came through the gap in the doorway to his pod. It would soon saturate the interior, and Quoyle hated being wet. “Kala mithra,” he complained aloud, leaning up again in his tight confines. The canvas bag was down by his feet, crowded against his heavy boots. He shuffled these and found himself severely limited for leverage.</p><p>Quoyle narrowed his eyes, looking down at the jammed corner of the door.</p><p> </p><p>The lid of the evac pod jettisoned outwards, straight through the air. Beneath it was a bright flare of violet and silver light that cracked with the bending flutter of steel and plastic twanging violently in the gloom of mid day Earth, New Vancouver. Following a few short minutes after was a pair of darkly patterned hands gripping the scalloped edge of the pod’s former doorframe, and Quoyle’s upper body raised through. He faced his left, then looked right, regripping the frame of the door to twist further and thump his legs inside the canister so he could turn and see what lay behind his location. His crests were already wet, a sheen of moisture from the air coating his smooth, porous scales. Quoyle let go of the ridges and turned to sit up, facing forward.</p><p>His gaze right settled on the Human Reaper corpse laying on its side, nearly buried in the dirt and reclaimed by the lichen and plants. Dark stains of rust appeared to bleed down its front, as though wounded by a mortal shot to the higher ribs.</p><p>Quoyle considered it in silence. His hands touched the right rim of the pod's fractured seal as he leaned forward to examine the dead Reaper closely with his tint-free eyes. He stared at the red circle with the black border on its chest plate. The realization that the symbol had been painted onto the Reaper after the fact it had lain there for quite some time made Quoyle realize he was looking at a marker for something probably left behind by someone who wished to warn others that this was their property, or that he had landed in someone’s neighborhood. Either way, it was a sign he needed to consider as warning. He hoped Gail had landed alright. Bending towards the bottom of the interior, Quoyle looped his boot with the strap of his bag. He pressed up on his hands, careful of the shredded frame from his biotic charge to remove the lid, dragging the bag up with him as he emerged high enough to reach down and grasp the bag’s handle. Taking it within his fingers, he stepped one leg out at a time over the hot canister sides. He stood, again taking stock of his surroundings while adjusting the gear. Gazing to the north, Quoyle tugged down the lining of his outer jacket and turned south. Above the trees some way off from the clearing he was in—loose a term it was because of the amount of dead Reaper hulk and overgrown, dense florae—he could make out smoke rising to the right of the Reaper’s black, shining skull condensed with drops of mist and rain.</p><p> </p><p>Gail was not much better off than Quoyle. The pod she had come down through the sky in was lodged between two trees. The trunks were skewered by the landing, warped and heated into a waxy smooth surface by the intense heat caused by the vessel she was inside. Branches split off at haphazard angles, having been destroyed by the pod’s passage and the flying debris thrown by the impact. A scorched circle of earth surrounded the wake of the damage.</p><p>Not far off, Gail’s arrival had also impacted the mid-day breakfast of a group of scavengers: men, women, and children caravanning through the backwoods of New Vancouver, the periphery of the city by the harbor. Looking out from their shelter, the curious survivors from the war spoke to one and other excitedly. Pointing at the trees split a-kilter by the evac pod, none were too eager to go over and investigate just yet.</p><p>“Ce pourrait être un missile des étoiles. Qui sait, Duran?” (It could be some missile from the stars. Who knows, Duran?) One of the scavengers with wide sallow eyes looked across the heads bundling down to avoid being hit by a possible late explosion, suggested by the scavenger’s words.</p><p>Duran, a quiet, pensive type, looked out from behind his hand cupping his mouth. The wired, dark eyes stared thoughtfully at the wreck. He dropped his hand. “Ce qui est à l’intérieur pourrait être précieux. Ce n’est pas ce que vous pensez. Très probablement l'un de ces tubes qu'ils envoient de temps en temps depuis les navires pour débarquer des fournitures sans toucher la Terre.” (It could be valuable what’s inside. It’s not what you think it is. Most likely one of those tubes they send time to time from the ships to land supplies without touching Earth.) He looked back at his cousin, Toure, and shrugged. “Je dis que nous allons attendre qu'il refroidisse, l'ouvrir et voler tout ce que nous trouvons à l'intérieur. Pourrait être de la nourriture, de l'eau, des vêtements. Little Prunellie a besoin de nouveaux bas. . .” (I say we go and wait for it to cool, open it and steal whatever we find inside. Could be food, water, clothes. Little Prunellie needs new stockings. . .) He gestured his dirty sleeved arm towards the pod. “Peut-être que nous trouvons quelque chose pour elle, non?” (Maybe we find something for her, no?)</p><p>The disheveled cousin across from him lowered his green eyes to the heads between them. He returned Duran’s glance. “Vous utilisez toujours Prunellie pour me convaincre d'avoir des idées idiotes. . . Très bien.” (You always use Prunellie to convince me into foolish ideas. . . Very well.) His gaze switched to the cleared ground surrounding the smoldering tree trunks holding the pod in place. A faint knocking could be heard from the vicinity of the vessel.</p><p>Duran and Toure both stared at each other. “Tu as entendu ça, d'accord?” (You heard that, right?) Toure asked.</p><p>“Père, il y a quelque chose à l'intérieur!” (Father, there is something inside!) the little brown head of hair beneath Toure’s left shoulder spoke up at him excitedly, pointing as the others beside her grabbed each other and whispered anxiously. Toure stared at his cousin as he shushed the children between them.</p><p>“Retournez voir Reina et Julita, les petites. Votre père et moi allons inspecter.“ (Go back to Reina and Julita, little ones. Your father and I will inspect.) Duran bent down and looked the children in the eyes.</p><p>They all had blue-green irises.</p><p>“Si quelque chose devait sortir de là et qui me ferait mal ou à votre père, pensez à vous éloigner le plus tôt possible avec les autres. Je ne pense pas qu'il y ait quelque chose à craindre. Ce sont les couleurs de l'Alliance à l'extérieur, vous voyez?” (If anything should come out of there that hurts me or your father, remember to get away as soon as possible with the others. I do not think it is anything to be afraid of. Those are Alliance colors on the outside, you see?) He pointed, but it was lost to them under the debris and dirt. Still, Duran could see it and was familiar with the shapes and hues of Cerberus Group, having served for a time within the Alliance black ops program before settling down to marriage and family life on Earth. That was long before the war and well before Cerberus went rogue, but an ex-employee never forgot the unmistakable orange and black links on white background.</p><p>He and Toure watched the children run behind them to another pair of women. With cautious looks towards their wives, they turned towards the pod and made out from the makeshift shelter hidden behind trees by where they’d stopped to eat and rest from their passage through the territory.</p><p> </p><p>The aged, suspicious, dirty faces of two men loomed over the glass window of Gail’s pod. She was laying on the side of the interior of the pod, having had to arrange herself to become comfortable in her padded confines. She looked to her left through the window. And waved. She might as well make nice with the natives. They looked hungry and nervous to her, their skin loose to their faces instead of fleshy and ruddy as the Alliance and Cerberus men and women she spent much of her time around. They had wide eyes nearly exuding from their heads, but for the most part they were human and did not look indoctrinated by the stupid expressions those types possessed.</p><p>Gail reached into her pocket on the right side of her coat and pulled out a card ID. She checked to make sure it was her identification, and held it to the window, dimming the interior by blocking the light out. She had a book on her lap she had been reading, whiling away the time since she was trapped and could not get out. Her only hope was that her landing party would find her, or in current matters, someone else.</p><p> </p><p>Toure looked at Duran, still reading the card.</p><p>“Gail. . . Hamilton,” Duran read aloud. He was quiet after, continuing to read the identifying information through the thick pane of glass between the woman’s stubby but neat fingernails.</p><p>“Américain-Français?” (American-French?) Toure asked.</p><p>“Avez-vous vu le visage?” (Did you see the face?) Duran asked, turning his expression to and raising a dark brown eyebrow at his cousin. “Écossais, si quelque chose.” (Scottish, if anything.)</p><p>“Devrions-nous la quitter alors?” (Should we leave her then?)</p><p>Duran glared at his cousin.</p><p>The card moved away. A hand waved in its place and pointed out the window, then knocked the number of times for ‘S.O.S.’ with short and long pauses. “C’est américain.” (It’s American.) Toure said.</p><p>“Pourquoi? Juste parce qu'elle demande de l'aide? Allez. Elle fait partie d’une suite d’intelligence artificielle appelée ‘Tricholome’.” (Why? Just because she asks for help? Come on. She’s part of some artificial intelligence suite named ‘Tricholome’.)</p><p>“C’est un terme français. . . Attendez, c’est un champignon.” (That’s a French term. . . Wait, that’s a fungus.)</p><p>“Nom étrange pour une organisation. . . Aidez-moi à l'ouvrir. . . Merde, il fait chaud.” (Strange name for an organization. . . Help me open it. . . Shit, it’s hot.) Duran hissed and wriggled his fingers after touching the pod. He looked up at the sky as more rain began to fall. “On le laisse ici un moment, ça va refroidir.” (We leave it here for a while, it will cool.) He looked inside the window, bending his face close to it.</p><p> </p><p>Gail could only see the haggard dark eyes shadowing over her viewing port. The man made some vague gestures with his hand, then pointed upwards. He moved away and waved his fingers, pointing to the side of the glass. “Oh, bother,” Gail said in her lonely captivity. “Shell’s probably too hot outside.”</p><p> </p><p>“La porte ne va pas s'ouvrir, pas avec elle coincée entre les arbres.” (The door is not going to open, not with it pinned between the trees.) Toure said, walking around the split trunks and inspecting the smooth glasslike state of the bark and yellow flesh revealed.</p><p>Duran stepped back and scrutinized the predicament, cupping his chin of scraggly beard. A woman came over with dark brown hair like his own and pointed to the pod. “Vous devez le déplacer, Duran. Poussez-le avec des bâtons. Il y a beaucoup de choix si vous allez derrière les arbres.” (You need to move it, Duran. Push it out with sticks. There’s plenty to choose from if you go behind the trees.)</p><p>“Julita, je pense que c’est exactement ce que nous allons faire. Ici. . . Vous vous tenez devant la fenêtre et lui signalez que nous vous aidons.” (Julita, I’m thinking that’s just what we’ll do. Here. . . You stand in front of the window and sign to her we are helping.)</p><p>“Est-elle américaine?” (Is she American?) the woman, Julita, asked. Duran looked at her, then between Julita and Toure.</p><p>“Qu'est-ce que cela a à voir avec quoi que ce soit?” (What does that have to do with anything?) he asked, waving his hands in perplexity at his wife.</p><p>“Toure a dit—” (Toure said—)</p><p>“Peu importe ce que Toure a dit. Et non, je vous parie qu’elle est anglaise écossaise.” (Never mind what Toure said. And, no, I bet you she’s Scottish English.)</p><p>“Sommes-nous en train de deviner ses antécédents?” (Are we guessing her background?) The second woman, Toure’s wife, asked as she came over with the three children. “Puis-je voir à quoi elle ressemble?” (Can I see what she looks like?)</p><p>“Arrêter. Nous la libérons. Toure, ramassez cette branche.” (Stop. We are getting her freed. Toure, pick up that branch.) Duran pointed to one on the ground with a charred stump tapered to a thin wedge from where it had detached of its source. “La pointe peut se casser, mais nous pouvons d'abord l'utiliser pour la coincer et la libérer.” (The tip might break off but we can can use it first to wedge it in and pry her free.) Helping his cousin, Duran walked to the left of the pod and picked up the branch Toure was struggling to lift. Together, they managed to tilt it up on end. Water-sodden as it was, they grunted and puffed as they hauled it towards the pod where they positioned it with shoves and kicks between Gail’s canister and the tree trunk on its left.</p><p>Through the glass, Gail could see the shadows of those outside moving around, and then hear the scrapings on the exterior, the bumping of something hard and heavy. She also managed to glimpse the face of a young woman with caked dirt in the creases of her fine skin. Gail’s face peered forward through the glass, then jerked away as something dark fell onto her window. “What the hell are they up to?”</p><p> </p><p>Quoyle held up a branch to clear his view of the pod surrounded by the funny sounding humans. They wore bedraggled layers of old dirty clothes, the one in charge of the rest with old fatigues of a government sort. They kept pushing their lever of a branch up and fighting with its continued falling down. The wood was so wet their grip continued slipping. Still, the humans were resolved to help Gail out of the pod, or to help themselves to whatever she had inside.</p><p>The smaller ones—children—thought it a game and were running around the elderly men and women, calling encouragement. While the party of four adults and three children were giving the pod rescue a show of effort, as futile as it was, even provoking Quoyle to grin and chuckle softly in his chest, there were a nervous bunch still hiding behind the flimsy shelter providing respite from the rain. It was only twenty feet off, and some of the tarps they had hung were hole-y and crinkled in that beaten way.</p><p>Quoyle turned his gaze from the shelter back to Gail’s helpers, who had finally managed to wedge the branch firmly enough between the exterior pod and the fork in the trees that they could put their weight onto the branch. The two men leaned onto it. Quoyle was impressed that for humans so thin, they really did think they had the strength to lift the thousand pound pod out of the trees’ wedge. He decided to assist. . .</p><p>Stepping from the brush, his canvas hooked over his shoulders, Quoyle held his strap with the left hand and extended his right arm, opening his palm upward in front of him.</p><p>The two men leaned as hard as they could onto the branch leaving stains in their already dirty clothes, and the children started to shout and jump, pointing as the pod began to rise. The women cheered as the men pushed even harder, gritting and shouting with exuberance. The pod slowly, slowly tipped to vertical, pried from the trunks, then continued up, floating away from the trees as the branch fell. The men nearly toppled. That was when everyone stopped. All eyes were riveted to the floating pod, which flew over their heads to across the trees, finally alighting in front of Quoyle. Using his biotics, he laid down the pod to rest on its back.</p><p>The humans left behind standing by the scorched trees all huddled together, gaping over at the strange Drell.</p><p>Bending down to one knee, Quoyle leaned over the glass window to peer in at Gail, who was shifting around inside to rearrange herself yet again. He waited until he saw her spectacles peering back up at him with hazel eyes. Quoyle gave her a wiggle of his fingers and a grin.</p>
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